Back in 2007 I had a rather enlightening conversation with the friend of a friend about a distance learning program he was sponsored to join by his employer. He would visit a website that contained the whole course material including the hand-outs, assignments and video lectures available on demand. At the end of the course term, he would receive his final evaluation reports and wait for his diploma. That way he managed to earn certificates and diplomas on subjects that were very relevant to his areas of work.
It helped him grow and contribute more effectively to the organization. At that time I realized there was more going on in Somalia than reported in the news. I dismissed the idea of distance learning being practical given the current situation. HR development is one of the many
opportunities presented by online distance learning, and it is such a commendable effort that some organizations are trying to exploit it to invest in their human assets.
My interest in this phenomenon is more about the role of distance learning in compensating for what Somalia’s education sector lacks. As you go through this article you will find that the time has never been more appropriate to make distance-learning a practical reality. The hardworking and lucky friend we talked about fits into a category of working men and women who hardly find the time to go to a class or do not have access to the training and educational programs they are interested in. Although I have no hard facts on the exact figures of those who get the opportunity to study abroad, we all know the truth that there are not so many of them. The number of academic institutions is rising and we are witnessing a new era in which education has become one of the biggest commercial industries in Somalia (after remittance, Telecommunications and Trading).
The number of formal higher education institutions in Post-1990 Somalia has been estimated to be in the two-figure range and the rumor is that many more that will offer programs and courses in new areas or disciplines of studies are being started. All of these efforts, however, fail short of filling the void created by the on-going crisis. For one reason, the existing academic institutions offer a limited choice of disciplines or areas of learning; and secondly, the furthest these institutions go is to offer undergraduate courses.
A distance learning program that cost US$100 million was launched by six educational institutions (Mogadishu University, Hargeisa University, Amoud University, East African University, the Somali Institute of Management and Administration Development and Puntland State University) in late 2005.
The Online Distance Learning (ODL) Initiative whose main partners are the World Bank, UNDP and the African Virtual University started with short certificate courses and has the ambition of facilitating complete degree programs mostly in language proficiency, business communication, journalism, and Information technology. A major share of this cost went into establishing the Information and Communications Infrastructure to facilitate the delivery of the course content to the students; in simpler terms, the Internet connectivity which is an enabler and a requirement for distance learning today. In technical terms, each of the six institutions had to get connectivity to the Internet via a VSAT connection.
Short for Very Small Aperture Terminal, VSAT is a technology that works just like the satellite TV receiver systems we have in our homes which instead of delivering TV over the satellite connection provides Internet connection bandwidth. Were there any alternatives to providing the necessary Internet connectivity? The answer is yes, and I believe the cost would have been much less in the long-run if it were given any consideration because satellite Internet bandwidth is expensive and video transmissions require relatively more bandwidth; but that is another episode of the sorry story about the state of Internet connectivity in this struggling country.
Each one of these institutions is connected to the Internet via a
shared 256 Kbps downlink and 128 Kbps uplink. According to an article
written in late 2006, the cost of 1Mbps of uplink/downlink was estimated to be between US$6000 – US$7000. To give you a clearer picture of how expensive VSAT Internet connections can be, especially in Africa, consider the case of Makerere University where it reportedly pays US$27,000 for a 2.5Mbps downlink and 128Kbps uplink connection. Do the math and consider facts like the impact of the world’s financial crisis and the ever increasing greed of the bloodsucking profiteers; the result: VSAT Internet bandwidth is very prohibitively expensive, and no sane person would base a sustainable solution on it.
Today distance learning exists in the form of E-Learning, earlier known as computer-assisted learning. It is an effort to mimic and closely simulate a real-world classroom environment which has, in addition to its shortcomings, many merits to it. The ODL program discussed earlier tries to compensate for the shortage of the human resources (teachers) by enabling a lecturer thousands of kilometers away from the campus to deliver a live lecture to a class of students in any of these institutions. Besides this live transmission, it is also possible
to deliver pre-recorded video lectures as well but interactivity is crucial for a productive learning environment.
Today’s e-Learning software solutions help to create such kind of
environment by adding collaboration functionality to the one-way delivery function of older systems. Tools like live chat, shared whiteboard, presentation windows and the likes have been added to make the interactions between the teacher and the students and among the students themselves possible.
All of these systems require nothing more than a web browser like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox to access; and implementing them is now possible and almost free – thanks to Open Source projects such as Moodle, OLAT and Sakai who gave us alternatives to the costly commercial products of the same category such as Blackboard and WebCT. An example of projects built upon free e-Learning solutions is Bar-ama-Baro, a volunteer-run initiative that aims at providing free online education and training for the Somali people.
The project is based on the Sakai learning management system which was initially developed by a consortium of universities notably Stanford University and MIT.Barama-Baro(www.bar-ama-baro) is an open project to which anyone can contribute and currently offers a couple of IT related courses. All the necessary components of an operational e-Learning platform are in place.
Well, at least almost all of them are available out there, except for the Internet connectivity required to facilitate the delivery of the content (knowledge) from the people who have it and live across our borders to those who will benefit form it. The need for a more affordable Internet connection for this purpose gets more intense when the current and deteriorating situation of Somalia is put into perspective.
Many foreign teachers who have sacrificed their lives to teach here(for whatever reason it is that they choose to come to Somalia – financial or out of humanity) have fled many areas of the country; those Somalis
who have much to share but fear the uncertain future of the region would not dare to come back mostly for good reasons. Distance Learning is the solution to deal with the resulting shortage of qualified educators; and the solution itself has that problem of poor Internet connectivity.
For self-paced distance learning programs to come to fruition in the country, we should first have a better solution to Internet connectivity issues for the region.
Those US$100 millions spent on the VSAT-based Internet could have been used to secure a share for the Somalis on the submarine cable drops just like the neighboring countries have.
This would have helped provide the required connectivity for the online distance learning programs and solved many more problems while creating more opportunities at the same time. Instead of beaming most of the Internet bandwidth used in the country from Djibouti via microwave, we could have our own Fiber Optic submarine cable drop and be connected directly to the world – not through a proxy. As I speculate about the subject I realize that it is more complicated than I imagine; it takes a government body or something of that sort to go through the necessary bureaucratic channels to make it happen. And we still lack this prerequisite.
How long will this situation last? Nobody knows; and it is time to quit
waiting for anything and move on. Until this issue with Internet
connectivity is resolved or the security condition of the country improves, there is little hope for those willing to take their knowledge to the second level to do just that. However, a solution that one can envision is to work on the development and implementation of a country-wide network infrastructure that will make it possible to connect the campuses of the educational institutions that exist today. Once this infrastructure is in place, a centralized e-Learning Management System adapted from anyone of the available open source solutions may be deployed.
This way, foreign teachers and professionals can be flown-in to
more secure areas of Somaliland and Puntland from which they will deliver the lectures and interact with the students in live and online sessions. To leverage the infrastructure costs, other uses for the public or private sector may be developed such as providing connectivity to hospitals, schools and local non-profit organizations.
Building a nation-wide IP network solves many of the issues of
connectivity we are facing today, and remove the hurdles on the way of a successful distance learning platform that can be used to help educate many of those who deserve and desperately need it.
It is the role of the regional authorities, telecommunications
companies and educational institutions to take this into their own hands and make it a reality. Work like this one does not necessarily have to be all about philanthropy; business models
that also benefit all the involved partners can be built on top of it.
A team of voluntary professionals at the Somali Forum for ICT is currently doing an in-depth research on the technical and economical feasibility of such an initiative and will soon publish it on their website.
Distance learning has a great promise to solve many of the problems the
academic sector is facing today. The technological advances we have made so far and the availability of the prerequisite components indicate that it is not only possible but also economically feasible to take on E-learning.